Musicology Commons^™

European Jazz Does Not Exist, Wouter Turkenburg

The IASJ Journal of Applied Jazz Research

Marion Dunkel and Josiah Boornazian have critically analyzed and evaluated important questions such as: What is jazz, and what it is not? How have its histories been written in the past? What are the various approaches in jazz historiography? Both authors provide useful suggestions to move past the confusing, standard teleological presentation of jazz history, and the methods used in the construction of jazz historiographies. I argue that jazz history must function as a dynamic and life-long applicable tool assisting the jazz musician in the decisions to be taken in musical, social, and cultural interactions.

Toxic Jazz Narratives - Dispelling The Illusory Relationship Between Suffering And Creativity, Rob Foster

The IASJ Journal of Applied Jazz Research

The trope of the suffering artist is a persistent theme in discussions about jazz, often overshadowing the music itself. The focus on the negative aspects of an artist's biography can inadvertently shape students' perceptions, leading them to associate artistic greatness with personal turmoil rather than with the technical and expressive aspects of the music. The emphasis on tragic life stories in introductory jazz courses can detract from a holistic understanding of the genre. Jazz should be explored as a rich tapestry of musical innovation, cultural expression, and collaborative effort, rather than through the lens of individual suffering. Highlighting the achievements …

Chenoweth Prevails: The Connection Between Social Standards And The Marimba’S Development In The Western Art Music Tradition, Jackson Hall

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Among percussionists, the names of many marimbists come to mind before that of Vida Chenoweth (1928-2018), the pioneer of the modern marimba recital. Chenoweth began her first recital tour in the early 1950s at a time when the marimba did not yet have a dedicated solo repertoire, and women were largely excluded from performing on orchestral instruments. This thesis explores the musical and social contexts in which Chenoweth performed and worked, with particular attention to her recital history, critical reviews, and, through works written specifically for her performance, her technical abilities. She not only sparked the evolution of marimba technique …

Minority In Baroque Trumpet Repertoire: Minor-Key Literature For Baroque Trumpet, Wing Heng Victor Yuen

Theses and Dissertations--Music

The repertoire for trumpet in the Baroque era is overwhelmingly in major keys for obvious reasons. As natural trumpet is limited by design to play the notes of the harmonic series, most players have little access to sonorities outside the major scale and arpeggios within the series without the help of technical innovations such as the slide, and much later, vent-holes. Baroque trumpet makers built valveless natural trumpets, which are limited by design to play the notes of the harmonic series. Since the fundamental physics limit the musical notes available to the natural trumpet, minor key is not an essentially …

How Has Popular Types Of Musicals Throughout Time Affected Reed Book Pit Musicians?, Bailey Coon

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research project will work to answer the question of how reed books in musicals have evolved over the years, and how those changes affect the woodwind players who take on those jobs and roles.

Additionally, this project aims to pinpoint outside factors that have helped to create the changes that reed books have experienced. This will help to create eras of musical theater. Also, if these changes can be attributed to specific changes, then a strategy can be created to help musicians who work for musicals; as most of those roles are by contract and not long-term full time …

Haven: Viewing The Concept Album Through The Classical Lens, Maria Keane

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This research project analyzes the album Haven by Canadian pop-rock band Marianas Trench and compares it to the seminal song cycles of Franz Schubert, Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin, as well as those of Robert Schumann, Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und Leben.

Haven is a concept album that is based on the hero’s journey framework outlined in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Josh Ramsay, the lead singer of the group, crafted his hero’s journey by drawing on his own life experiences. The songs on the album represent different plot points from Campbell’s framework, telling a cohesive story over …

Commissioning And Recording Project Of New Works For Saxophone Focused On Promoting Mexican Composers And Educating Future Commissioning Saxophonists, Andres Efrain Santana

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This document chronicles my process of commissioning and recording five new works by Mexican composers. To contextualize this experience, I provide a brief introduction of Mexican contemporary music history, an overview of second-hand accounts of the commissioning process, my personal experience of this process, and my assessment of the impact these works could have on the classical saxophone repertoire. As I have reflected on my own experience with historical and contemporary accounts of the commissioning process, it has become clear that personal connections between composers and performers and the patronage or funding linked to those relationships are just as important …

La Valse And The Parisian Salon: Nostalgic Continuities And Sonorous Modernisms, Claire Weydt

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Immediately following World War I and the death of prominent French composer Claude Debussy, French composers and music critics were concerned that the war created an unbridgeable chasm between generations of composers who, through their various aesthetic allegiances, worked to define musical sounds as undeniably French. Numerous scholars have characterized this process as an aesthetic rupture brought on by the World Wars. French composer Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), however, seems to have bridged this gap, at least for some influential critics. My project challenges notions of wartime rupture by resituating musical modernism within a framework of aesthetic continuity. Ravel’s choreographic poem …

The Effects Of Operatic Voice Type On Singer Identity, Adelaide J. Mcdonald

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Within Western art music, voices are typically classified using the Fach system, which is based upon vocal characteristics and separates singers into the categories of soprano, mezzo soprano, contralto, counter tenor, tenor, bass, and baritone. Over time, these categories have become embedded with social and cultural meaning within the operatic world, leading to the development of stereotypes and expectations surrounding singers, as well as social categories and identities, referred to in this study as “sociocultural vocal categories” and “sociocultural vocal identity,” respectively. Currently, there are limited explorations of the sociocultural vocal categories and their associated stereotypes, with research on singer …

Spiral Historiography. A Balanced Alternative To Teaching Jazz History, Josiah Boornazian

The IASJ Journal of Applied Jazz Research

Jazz history is often presented in collegiate textbooks and classrooms as a linear, teleological, and chronological progression from one style to another. Some scholars have recently reacted against this pattern and have instead focused heavily on viewing jazz history through the lens of one or a few narrow perspectives such as race, economics, politics, gender, or similar topics. This paper argues that both of these approaches, taken separately, are flawed, and that therefore a more effective methodology might be to integrate the two by utilizing the abstract concept of a spiral. A spiral is a shape that, in three spatial …

Who Is Allowed To Compose Catholic Church Music? Ferdinand Hiller's Insightful Report On The Sacred-Music Competition In Louvain (1866), Jürgen Thym, Ralph P. Locke

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In 1866, a competition was held in Louvain (Belgium) for a new setting of the Latin Mass text; the aim was that the winning piece be accessible in style and require only choir and organ. The jury included, among others, the composers Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, and Ferdinand Hiller; the lexicographer Fétis; and Joseph d’Ortigue, music critic for the Journal des débats, editor of Le Ménestrel, and a prominent advocate for the regeneration of Catholic church music.

In 1880, Hiller—longtime director of the Cologne Conservatory—published an essay describing the competition in detail. His essay, never before translated or discussed, forms …

The Vagina Dentata: A Case For Unlocking Mouths, Loosing Hips, And Spreading The Gospel Of Healing Women's Sexual Performance Anxiety, Alisha Lola Jones

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

This article explores how vagina dentata folklore—stories and imagery about a mythical "toothed vagina"—connects to the ways Black religious communities often cultivate silence around women’s sexual lives, particularly within the “Worth the Wait” and Word of Faith movements. Ignited by womanist religious ethnographer Monique Moultrie’s scholarship on sexual silence in these movement, I take seriously the musicological chasm by exploring how these ministries influence Black women’s sexual agency and moral decision-making through inequitable theological procedures and discourses. The vagina dentata metaphor emerges as a symbol of constrained appetites—respiratory (larynx), digestive (intestine, anus), and reproductive (uterus, vagina)—reflecting broader sociocultural and religious …

Introduction By Kurt Ellenberger And Wouter Turkenburg, Kurt Ellenberger, Wouter Turkenburg

The IASJ Journal of Applied Jazz Research

Introduction Volume 2 of the IASJ Journal of Applied Jazz Research with an overview of the articles.

How Is Music History Important And How Can Music History Be Included Into Our Regular Music Curriculum?, Abby Michalak

Honors Projects

From a music education major's perspective, music history is rarely taught in high school and middle schools today. Music history can teach so much to students, including context, style, and even why pieces were written. Through this paper, we explore why music history is an important topic to be taught in schools and how music programs across the country can include it into their curriculums through smaller sized lesson plans. This paper includes a sample curriculum that goes through the different period of music and a unit for "spotlights" for countries that are rarely represented in high school and middle …

Predictors Of Mystical Experiences In The Electronic Dance Music Scene, Cody Edward Lesniak

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the nature and frequency of reported mystical experiences within the Electronic Dance Music (EDM) scene and the roles psychedelic and psychedelic-like substances, set, and setting play in facilitating these experiences. Participants were recruited using posts on a variety of EDM-related Facebook groups (EDM, EDM Universal, EDM Festivals and Raves, etc.) and Reddit threads (bonaroo, electricdaisycarnival, RavesAndRavers, etc.). Participants completed a self-report survey consisting of questions pertaining to their involvement in the EDM scene, motives for attendance at EDM events, motives for drug use, importance of the values of peace, love, unity, and respect (PLUR), the proportion …

Beyond Surrealism: The Developing Keyboard Style Of André Souris, Melanie T. Mallard

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

André Souris (1899-1970) is perhaps best known as a musical contributor to the Belgian surrealist group founded by Paul Nougé, but he assumed many roles throughout his life, including composer, writer, director, and promoter of modern music. His various interests influenced the style of his compositions, which remain largely unpublished and have received little scholarly attention beyond researchers of surrealism. Through this survey of many of Souris’ works for keyboard, I attempt to lay the groundwork for further discussion about Souris’ musical contributions not only through the lens of surrealism but also throughout his compositional career. This descriptive analysis of …

Musicology Colloquium: Ay, Ay, Ay, Ay Canta Y No Compones: Mariachi Performance And Composition, Latin American And Iberian Institute, Dr. Russell C. Rodríguez

LAII Events

Wednesday, November 06, 2024 | 02:00 pm

Latin American and Iberian Institute (801 Yale Blvd NE)

801 Yale Blvd NE (campus building #165)

About:

Focusing on the impact of technology on mariachi music, this presentation examines the transition of the ensemble and its repertoire at the beginning of the 20th century. Rodríguez ultimately argues that the global reach of the mariachi, facilitated by the modern capitalist marketplace, garnered musical developments from cosmopolites contributing to the form’s vibrancy.

Russell C. Rodríguez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). He received his …

Looping: The Music Of Steve Reich, Ty D. Ellender

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Steve Reich, a New York-based composer and percussionist, was best known for his innovative compositional techniques during the minimalist era. Early in his career, Reich began manipulating recorded tape by splicing it into small repetitive loops and playing the tapes simultaneously. Through this process, Reich discovered a musical phenomenon known as phasing, ultimately creating pieces such as It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). Phasing is a process in which two identical melodic and/or rhythmic patterns gradually change their relationship to one another throughout the course of a work. As the piece progresses, new melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic …

Mater Dolorum Settings By Georg Reutter The Younger And Gregor Werner, As Reflected In Music By Joseph Haydn, Janet K. Page

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

Mater dolorum, a text by Heinrich Rademin (1674–1731), is a German-language oratorio intended for performance before a model of the Holy Sepulcher on Good Friday. Such works, amalgamating court sepolcro and popular traditions, were performed in churches throughout Central Europe during Holy Week. Mater dolorum, one of the most popular texts, was set by three of Haydn’s older contemporaries: Georg Reutter Jr. (1726), Gregor Werner (ca. 1733), and Georg Christoph Wagenseil (ca. 1739). In this essay, I consider how these settings, and the attitudes displayed in them, intersected with Haydn’s world and could have influenced him, especially in his …

The Context And Early Reception Of Haydn’S Stabat Mater, Dexter Edge

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

Haydn spent his formative musical years in Vienna, a city with a strong Marian cult that was expressed musically through such works in German as Heinrich Rademin’s Mater dolorum (set by Werner, Reutter the Younger, and Wagenseil), and by innumerable settings of the Latin sequence Stabat mater. In Vienna, musical settings of the Stabat mater were traditionally performed not only on the feast of Septem Dolorum B. V. M., but also on Saturdays in Lent and during Holy Week. In fact, we now know that Haydn sang a cappella settings of the Stabat mater by Palestrina and Reutter …

A “Rosary” Symphony? The Impact Of Haydn’S Religious Faith On His Symphonies, Henry Stratmann

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

Despite expressing a strong religious faith throughout his life, Haydn’s secular music far outnumbers his sacred works. Certain symphonies, however, include either allusions to religious themes or project what can be interpreted as a devotional mood. Specifically, some unusually long symphonic slow movements during Haydn’s “Sturm und Drang” period may be orchestral depictions of a meditative, contemplative, prayerful state of mind. They likely reflect the particular practices of Roman Catholic belief and worship that were a pervasive part of the culture in which Haydn lived his entire life and also part of his personal belief system. The Adagio assai of …

Reassessing Haydn’S Sacred Music: Abstracts Of Published Conference Papers, Michael E. Ruhling

HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America

No abstract provided.

The Tradition Of Illusion: Guitar Arrangement As A Post-Canonical Patchwork, Katalin Koltai

Soundboard Scholar

This paper proposes an underpinning terminology for scholarly discussions of contemporary arrangement practices in the field of classical guitar performance. The introduction provides some historical foundations for the topic, aiming to present the roots of different approaches and methods in the work of important guitar arrangers. The paper continues by contextualizing arrangement processes within linguistics and language philosophy, discussing the topic of translation, and giving an overview of relevant terminologies. The centre of the paper is the theoretical investigation of arrangement and the identification of translating acts related to musical space, instrumental choreography, texture, timbre, or a combination of those, …

Musical Semiotics In Kate Soper’S Ipsa Dixit (2010–2016), Scott A. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the six parts of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit (2010–2016). While individual parts have received some music theoretical attention, this is the first analysis of the entire Pulitzer Prize-nominated work. Ambiguity and contingency are major themes of Ipsa Dixit, and by treating each part independently and in combination, I hope to honor Ipsa’s contingent status as a unified work comprised of six complete works. Soper’s libretto unifies an assemblage of texts with adaptations of Aristotle to investigate the intersections of language and music with authority, veracity, and (un)intelligibility.

I theorize that Soper’s “philosophy-opera” dramatizes the formation of …

Timbres Oubliés: The Forgotten Sounds Of Loeffler's Octet, Graeme Steele Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Modern musicians play a lot of old music and a lot of new music, but not so much “new old music.” This study—with its accompanying critical edition score, world-premiere recording and first present-day performances—represents, at long last, the deliverance of one such work from the ashes of history to the ears of the present: Charles Martin Loeffler’s forgotten Octet for Two Clarinets, Harp, Two Violins, Viola, Cello and Double Bass, a piece that was left unpublished, unrecorded and unheard since 1897.

This paper documents my efforts to finally reintroduce the Octet to the repertoire. By cross-referencing the autograph manuscript score …

Justin Holland's Guitar Music Collection, Robert Coldwell

Soundboard Scholar

Although much information is available about Holland's biography and compositions, little research has been done on how he acquired his deep knowledge of the guitar and how he may have interacted with other guitarists of his day.

Some years after Justin Holland's death in 1887, his son, Justin Minor Holland, claimed to have "one of the most elaborate libraries of guitar music, mostly of old masters." This collection could give more insight into the activities of guitar music collectors and guitarists in the United States of the 19th century. After much research, seven bound volumes of guitar music have been …

Singer’S Guide To Hak Jun Yoon’S Selected Art Songs, Sunmin Cha

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Composer Hak Jun Yoon is at the forefront of popularizing Korean art songs through the combination of artistry and mass appeal, positioning him as one of the representative composers of contemporary Korea. Recently, Yoon’s songs gained significant popularity after being featured on the Korean vocal competition TV program “Phantom Singer,” playing a major role in sparking public interest in Korean art songs in general. This document aims to widen that circle to more classical singers by analyzing poetic and musical elements in four of Yoon’s representative songs: “On the Way to You,” “A Flower Blooms Alone,” “Lingering Scent,” and “The …

Reimagining Haydn’S Seven Last Words For String Quartet: Recasting, Retelling, And Reorchestrating For A Modern Audience, Jeremy J. Kienbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Joseph Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross stands as an anomaly not just in Haydn’s oeuvre but in the catalogues of all formidable composers over the past three hundred years. It is unique in its construction: seven slow sonata form movements sandwiched by an introduction and a surprising earthquake finale; and even more outstanding that Haydn published three distinct versions of the work over a ten-year period. Further, the transformation of the Seven Last Words from a sacred to secularly performed work in Haydn’s time warrants further discourse, especially considering its present-day performance practice and reception.

This …

Impressionism In The Hands Of Griffes, Bauer, And Howe, And The Musical Climate In Early 20th-Century America, Elaine Sara Lim

Dissertations, 2020-current

American composers Charles Griffes (1884-1920), Marion Bauer (1882-1955), and Mary Howe (1882-1964) are considered “Impressionist” composers by some scholars. This document will explore selected piano works of each composer to determine the extent to which impressionistic traits are present. Topics such as tonality, harmony, texture, and individual style will be examined, as well as the significant relationship between music and poetry. American Impressionism was short-lived but served as a link to Modernism, as all three composers eventually experimented with other styles. Early 20th-century American audiences, accustomed to the influx of European artists and music, were slow to embrace the new …

Camp À La Campagne: Francis Poulenc’S Les Animaux Modèles, C.J. Everett

Dissertations

Francis Poulenc’s ballet Les Animaux modèles [The model animals] premiered in 1942 at the Paris Opéra during the German occupation of Paris to favorable reviews from prominent voices in the Parisian musical scene. Set in the French countryside (la campagne) in the seventeenth century, the ballet is a seemingly honest depiction of quaint rural life. To create the short vignettes that comprise the work, Poulenc (1899–1963) adapted well-known fables of the poet Jean de La Fontaine (1621–95). Existing discussions of Les Animaux modèles primarily focus on the ballet’s conception during World War II and the political implications of …